Every so often I come across something that reminds me what kind of a place we live in, and makes me glad of it.
We were recently making one of our regular visits to Salisbury Hospital to see the resident Fibromyalgia specialist concerning Wife’s ongoing pain management and touching base on any new or improved ways of doing it. In pre Sat Nav days we would have gone via main roads as we consider being late for an appointment pretty rude. However a few visits ago Eliza, our Sat Nav, took us via a geographically more direct but somewhat less than main road route and it stuck so we now allow extra time and go via the scenic route.
All was going well until we hit the back of a traffic queue on a bit of road we knew there were no traffic calming measures or other statutory helps to motorists. As we got around a corner into a straighter bit we realised the reason for the delay. Rather a lot of sheep. In the middle of the road. I say in the middle, actually blanket coverage would be a more accurate way to describe what we saw.
Evidently it was time to move the flock from one pasture to another and facilitating this was a mixture of a bloke leading on a mini tractor with hay on the back (the carrot), a woman on a small pony bringing up the rear herding the recalcitrant ones (the stick) and a pig (the pig). Have to say the ol’ carrot and stick thing I had heard about, the carrot, stick and pig, not so much.
Now I have to say that this is mostly speculation, I didn’t actually ask anyone involved, but it would appear that the film Babe was not so much a story as a documentary. Anyway it suits my purpose and way of thinking to conclude that this particular porker was indeed one of the fabled sheep-pigs. Granted it may have just been hanging around looking for pannage and hooked up with them, but it was at the back of the herd and doing the ‘move along now’ thing with the sheep. Proof if proof were needed!
We were late for the appointment as a result of this, but since the consultant was running even later it turned out to be of no consequence. Maybe we’ll leave just a little bit more spare time next time just to be on the safe side….